“[…] Now, Rodriguez carefully combs, parts, and arranges strangers’ hair but the silence has dissipated and curiosity and vulnerability take its place. People line up to have their hair braided, to be transformed by and simultaneously become part of a temporal familial tribe.” (excerpt from Virginia Arce’s writing about Rodriguez’ first performance of Braiding Traces)

Grab Bag Studio is hosting the next Project Embodied performance! Braiding Traces by Sheila Garrett Rodriguez is a participatory, intergenerational performance that connects to ideas of communitas, reproduction, and reenactment. Witness this marvelous performance, as the artist and her daughters explore the notion of the passing of knowledge through domestic and mundane acts that are often invisible to the public and poorly documented by the institution. Braiding Traces will be followed by a reading of Virginia Arce's words in response to the performance.

ABOUT PROJECT EMBODIED: Project Embodied creates social gathering and archiving for performative, time-based and experiential works. We organize intimate gatherings where the artist can meet with a curious, small group of people to present work that requires a live audience. Each gathering presents a social happening where the audience learns about the performer, where the performer learns about the audience, and where the art is in between. Despite the growing presence of performances in the visual art context, there is a lack of knowledge and research around this discipline. The practice of writing is one of the most crucial but underdeveloped methods to document performative works. Such documentation presents the foundation for building an archive and ultimately a stronger discourse. We address this problem by actively building and adding to a discourse that is artist-led and artist-owned. Therefore, Project Embodied commissions one writer for each performance to document the work experienced. The writings are added to the project’s free and public online archive with selected writings published in the performance art journal ‘The Invisible Archive’. Project Embodied organized by Natalie Mik.